


the lives and times of crowley and aziraphale

by PaleBlueEis



Category: Archy and Mehitabel - Don Marquis, Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Friendship (Good Omens), Alternate Universe - Animals, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Gen, Poetry, but also they are a cockroach and an alley cat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:54:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29944074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaleBlueEis/pseuds/PaleBlueEis
Summary: if you leave this laptop openi will write you poemsabout my lifeas a cockroachand ex-demonand about aziraphale the alley catprobably a lot about himif i know myself at allsure im a cockroach nowits a new perspectivebut some things never changeyou can call me crowley
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 12
Collections: GO-Events Book Fest





	1. you can call me crowley

**Author's Note:**

> Archy, the cockroach who composed his poems by jumping around on a typewriter keyboard, made his newspaper debut in 1922 with the assistance of the journalist Don Marquis. These poems often featured the adventures of Archy's friend Mehitabel the alley cat and her many past lives. Reincarnation--samsara, eternal return, fanfiction, call it what you will--has restarted the cycle with new participants.  
> Thank you to the organizers of GO-Events Book Fest for their role in perpetuating the cycle.

Our house is old and like all old houses it is home to many occupants in addition to our human selves. Among these are rats, sadly, and where there are rats there are stray cats, though these felines keep themselves to themselves in the alleyway.  
  
But my first thought, despite this company, was that the entity operating my laptop was a ghost. Or perhaps a ghost and a rat, at the same time, since even then I did not like to make speciesist assumptions about the likely inhabitants of the afterlife. Or possibly, as I have often suspected must be the case before it began spewing poems apparently of its own accord, my laptop was simply possessed by a demon. Or perhaps some combination of all three—there are more things in Heaven and Earth, OS 11, than are dreamt of in your binary logic. 

Since these events have been reported on social media and so are accepted as truth by some substantial portion of the population, I don’t mind making a statement about the events that transpired on my laptop in what seems like the recent past, although after a year of quarantine time has no meaning so honestly who knows.

When I went into my home office earlier than usual one morning, I found a gigantic cockroach jumping around on my keyboard.

He didn’t see me, so I watched him. He would climb up the screen and then launch himself, face downward, so the full force of his body had enough impact to press the keys even on a disastrous macbook keyboard of the kind I am doomed, no doubt by a less writer-friendly demon, to possess. So he went, one slow letter after another. 

I can truly say that I have never seen a cockroach work so hard or perspire so freely. It is understandable that given the intense labor of his writing process, he left off the extra keystrokes necessary for capital letters and most punctuation. Since I had exorcised the autocorrect demons in a prior fit of pique, he was spared that indignity at least. After about an hour of this excruciating poetic labor, he crawled, exhausted, into one of the piles of draft printouts that are always littering the floor under my desk.

When I looked at the document open on the laptop screen, this is what I found. Since my browser windows are almost exclusively dedicated to open tabs on AO3, I assumed—correctly, as it turned out—that posting here must be his intention. 

expression is the need of my soul  
i was once a rock-n-roll demon  
freddie mercury had nothing on me  
but i died  
got discorporated that is  
and my soul went into the body of a cockroach  
you know the ones that will still be here  
after the apocalypse  
a little humor from the funsters downstairs  
you could go by crawly again they said  
that satan is a laugh a minute

so i have a new outlook  
i don’t take as much for granted  
i should have eaten more cake  
when i had the chance

come to think of it boss  
if you left some cake out   
next to the laptop  
i could have one less regret  
just a thought

also   
there’s an alley cat named aziraphale  
he comes by the window   
rubs his soft grey fur against the window  
could you leave it open sometimes  
i think aziraphale gets cold  
in spite of the fur  
the cold does not affect me  
now that im a cockroach  
but when I was a snake  
an angel kept me warm  
even when it rained

actually aziraphale can have my cake  
otherwise he’s stuck eating rats  
which doesn’t suit him  
he is used to the finer things in life

if you leave this laptop open  
i will write you poems  
about my life  
as a cockroach  
and ex-demon  
and about aziraphale the alley cat   
probably a lot about him  
if i know myself at all  
sure im a cockroach now  
its a new perspective  
but some things never change  
you can call me crowley


	2. aziraphale knew cleopatra and so did i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> aziraphale and i  
> we got to talking  
> how aziraphale knew cleopatra  
> and so did i  
> i learned he had some wrong ideas  
> about how things went down

**aziraphale knew cleopatra and so did i**

boss idk about your readers  
they wonder why i don’t use spellcheck  
or more punctuation  
you’d think  
does the cockroach  
have an authentic voice  
is the more pressing question  
it is hard enough  
hopping around on these keys  
i don’t need to walk a mile for a comma  
better to have lowercase  
than wrong capitals breaking up the lines  
computers don’t understand verse forms  
they don’t have free will  
it only seems that way  
but autocorrect was one of mine  
it puts in the apostrophes  
but only sometimes

we think you should know  
aziraphale the alley cat is an angel  
whose soul formerly inhabited  
a bookseller  
we have known each other a long time  
i don’t know why he came back as a cat  
unless our old bosses  
learned about a trick we pulled  
we switched bodies  
aziraphale took a bath in hell  
it was a whole thing  
bet hes glad we switched back  
now that im a cockroach  
but at least  
im not afraid of water

thank you for leaving the window open  
even if the screen is down  
we can talk that way  
i don’t want aziraphale to feel left out  
of my literary career  
when the poor thing went centuries  
thinking i didn’t read  
lol  
m a bit of a trickster  
serves me right  
that shakespeare took my best lines  
which speaking of  
aziraphale and i  
we got to talking  
how aziraphale knew cleopatra  
and so did i  
i learned he had some wrong ideas  
about how things went down  
death by asp to the breast  
was not my idea  
i know it looks suspicious  
with my side hustle  
as a snake  
but appearances deceive  
who would look at me  
and think ‘poet’  
they see me  
and shriek  
put out little plastic traps  
by the floorboards  
but poet i am

so believe me when i say  
i had nothing to do with antony  
that was before i ever used that name  
aziraphale always suspects me  
just because i am a demon  
servant of satan  
etc  
people aren’t their jobs

besides  
maybe an asp  
seems a logical step  
when you love like cleopatra  
and they tell you antony is dead  
burned or whatever  
but eternity leaves no outs  
stretches long and lonely  
an asp wont fix it  
love is beyond my wiles

aziraphale says  
he believes me now  
he was hungry  
and got grumpy  
he misses the food  
in cleopatra’s palace  
they had good fish  
by the nile  
aziraphale talks about fish  
more than he used to  
said he’d sell his soul  
for a can of tuna  
he should know better  
that never goes well but  
hes a soft angel and cant live on rats  
if you leave some tuna  
on the windowsill  
ill write an extra poem


	3. aziraphale and the rats

**aziraphale and the rats**

boss it’s a good thing  
you left the tuna  
aziraphale got talking  
to the rats  
they never meant to spread disease  
he said  
people misjudge them  
he said  
and it may be natural  
for cats to eat them  
immortal enemies since eden  
mortal enemies i said  
cats and rats being mammals  
but then again i said  
you thought dolphins were fish

don't be pedantic crowley  
he said  
and don't bring up fish  
big eyes all reproachful  
which is the absolute worst  
and i've recently become a cockroach  
so that's saying something  
you know how it is with enemies  
he said  
of whatever lifespan  
once you get to talking  
of a long cold evening  
just you and the rats  
you become friends  
so i think he’d go hungry  
if it weren’t for you boss  
he’s gone soft on the rats  
such a soft bloody angel  
you have no idea

should be having  
dinner at the ritz  
going for picnics  
dancing in clubs  
the kind where gentlemen go  
not casout alley rats  
or cockroach poets  
who cant even open a window  
or punctuate  
heaven has no mercy  
even on its own

boss   
i think aziraphale  
wants to read my poems  
this would be embarrassing  
as he is my muse  
so if you open the window  
for a cold alley cat  
please preserve my dignity  
set a screensaver  
for when i stop jumping on the keyboard  
he won't figure that out   
technology  
not his cup of tea  
speaking of  
maybe leave one in a saucer  
with extra milk  
and sugar  
even an alley cat  
likes sweet things


	4. the cockroach who had been to hell except not really

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> boss i have never heard anything so ridiculous  
> and i have listened to a drunk angel’s   
> explanations of marine life

the cockroach who had been to hell except not really

boss ive been talking to some of the other bugs  
I think maybe the insects have gotten  
a bum rap as people used to say  
i thought snakes were low on the totem pole   
but compared to houseflies we were exhalted  
not to mention cockroaches  
we are somewhere below fleas  
we don’t even bite   
but whatever   
it’s not like i was beloved as a demon  
and cockroaches not winning any awards  
for rocket science

i went exploring   
in the wild wood aka under the sink   
seeking out my cockroach brethren  
i found a group of young under the sink  
gathered around an elder  
telling how he’d been to hell and back  
oh this should be good I said to myself  
and sat down to listen  
boss i have never heard anything so ridiculous  
and i have listened to a drunk angel’s   
explanations of marine life  
old man cockroach said  
he fell into an abyss  
there were billows and billows of smoke  
thick and yellow and foul-smelling  
he was coughing choking  
cockroach souls everwhere their legs in the air  
there were winged beasts he said  
flying and falling dead on the ground  
all the young cockroaches  
sat in rapt attention   
drinking in his wisdom  
i saw enough of that as a demon  
idiots falling prey to false prophets  
but I digress  
so i said old man  
it was a figure of speech   
old man you have never seen hell  
i am an old hand and it is nothing like what you describe  
cockroaches are not the main event there  
it’s demons and human souls in eternal agony  
the occasional angel with a bath towel  
what you are describing is fumigation  
just plain old people who want you dead  
take it from me  
people come up with the worst of it  
hell is more of an addendum   
i did my best for 6 thousand years  
and i never came close to the humans  
for evil genius

the young cockroaches just gathered closer  
round the old one muttering  
in my direction what a nutter   
as if i were a true prophet and not just  
a misplaced demon   
if i had been a true prophet   
and they had been human  
they would have ignored me even harder  
so maybe humans should not lord it over   
us insects quite so much

boss you forgot to leave the window open  
i worry aziraphale might get lonely  
with just the rats for company  
and i don’t mind the cold


End file.
